Karen Tweed & Ian Carr
by Maureen Brennan

As all folk music afficionados know, it’s an incestuous genre. Band members are always crossing over into other bands. Two of the busiest and most popular players in England today are piano accordionist Karen Tweed and guitarist Ian Carr. In addition to their own duo, they perform together as half of two different quartets: Swåp, with Ola Bäckström and Carina Normansson of Sweden; and The Two Duos Quartet, with Andy Cutting and Chris Wood. In addition, Tweed plays and sings with The Poozies. Until recently, Ian Carr was a part of The Kathryn Tickell Band; he still performs with Brendan Power and many others who cross his path for session and production work, as well as live performances.

Where did these two begin, and how did they connect with each other? For Ian Carr, one of the most sought-after guitarist/accompanists in folk music, he, unexpectedly, began with the harmonica. "At the age of five, my mother and father bought me a mouth organ, and I learned to play that with their encouragement. I enjoyed that, and then I learned to play the piano accordion. I played John Denver songs and Beatles songs for my mother and father and all their friends, and also in school and for old people. I was a small child with glasses and an eyepatch, so everyone loved me, and that led me to think I was quite good at music.

"When I was an adolescent, I decided that it was very uncool to play the accordion because my friends had all bought electric guitars. I wanted an electric guitar, so I learnt some chords on my mother’s acoustic guitar. The first thing I learned was ‘Octopus’ Garden,’ by the Beatles, and the second thing was ‘Don’t Let Me Down,’ also by the Beatles. Then I played in rock bands in Penrith. In fact, I was kicked out of a rock band because I couldn’t play barre chords, so then I learned how to play them. We had a skinhead following for some reason, even though we didn’t play skinhead music. But all the while, even though I thought it was really uncool, I still played accordion in a ceilidh band called The Harvesters. We did barndances and things.

"When I left school, having failed all my exams, I thought, ‘What am I going to do?’ By this point I’d met some friends in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, where I started playing in a folk band. I went on the dole and was unemployed for four or five years, and then I went on an enterprise allowance scheme. By then, I was playing with the Old Rope String Band, who became quite successful after I left! I next, started playing with Kathryn Tickell, and through that, met Karen Tweed."

Karen Tweed began her musical career with Irish dance lessons. "It was through Irish dancing that I first got interested in Irish music. I used to listen to the tapes we would dance to, and I couldn’t believe how anybody could play that fast. I thought that it was either a tape that was being played too fast, or that it must have been done on a machine. At that time, I hadn’t started to play the accordion, but I had started to play the melodica, which is like a keyboard that you blow into [both Tweed and Carr play these on their albums], and I used to mimic some of the tunes I heard on the tapes, but I couldn’t get them anywhere near fast enough. It was quite instrumental in my getting interested in Irish music, just through the curiosity of wanting to find out how anybody could play for Irish dancing. When I then went for competitions, I realized that people did play that fast, although it wasn’t actually very fast at all. When you play for Irish dancing, you end up playing slower than DeDannan or Four Men and a Dog. You play quite slowly, but to a beginning Irish dancer, it sounded like the fastest thing I had ever heard."

Sibling rivalry actually started Tweed on her future instrument, the piano accordion. When her older sister began taking lessons from local player Joe Coll, she decided she would like to play, as well. "My father said I could go for lessons if I shared the same accordion as my sister for practicing, and if I didn’t get a good report of progress in six months, then I wasn’t allowed to go any more. This was a great plan of my father’s because I was determined to prove that I could be good at an instrument, and I wanted an accordion of my own."

Part of the regimen of taking lessons with Joe Coll was that the students would play in a marching band he led. "It had quite a strong Scottish, almost Orange, feel to it, and we played kind of Protestant marches, which was quite bizarre for me, when I came from an Irish Catholic family. The main thing I remember that was absolutely ridiculous is that I had a 120-bass accordion, which is much larger than the accordion I play now, and I had to march for hours and hours — just doing these funny little figure of eight routines and things, heaving this huge accordion about. Either my parents were sadists or we were all a bit naive at the time, but I think it’s kind of a crazy idea to play a huge accordion, as an 11-year-old wiry girl, but I suppose it made me quite fit."

While still playing in the marching band, Tweed began to take classical music lessons with Lawry Eady. Her parents were interested in having her learn Irish traditional music, and she became involved with the Comhaltas Ceoltoiri Eireann organization, eventually studying with John Whelan, who was from Luton at the time. "John couldn’t play the piano accordion, and he couldn’t read music very well. I couldn’t play the button accordion (these are two totally different systems of playing). So, the teaching was done mostly by ear and I suppose, in a way, I learned to play Irish music in the style of the button accordion, which made me slightly different from most piano accordion players. Then he emigrated to America when I was 16 or 17, and I just started playing sessions and teaching myself, and I stopped listening to accordion music. I started listening to flutes and fiddles and trying to mimic how flutes and fiddles played the decoration and ornamentation of Irish music."

Tweed and Carr first met at The Shetland Folk Festival in May 1990. Tweed was there accompanying Roger Wilson, while Carr was playing with The Kathryn Tickell Band. As Tweed recalled: "I walked into a session at about one o’clock in the morning, and I saw this great session with many, many fiddle players, a couple of flutes, and Ian Carr playing guitar. I thought he was one of the best guitarists I’d ever heard, and one of the most interesting musically. He didn’t try to play like Arty McGlynn or Paul Brady or any of these people to back Irish or Scottish tunes, and I was very excited about this. So, the session went on, and Ian and I were the last to leave at about six o’clock in the morning."

Later, when accordionist Lyn Tucker left The Kathryn Tickell Band, Tweed came to mind. "I was probably the only nonprofessional accordion player you knew at the time, who’d be up for playing in Kathryn’s band, wasn’t I?" she asked Carr. "In September 1991, Lyn Tucker had left in the middle of a tour, and they had three or four more dates still to do with no accordion player. So, I got a very rushed telephone call from some gig or other, asking me to join the band. I met them at Heathrow Airport two days after the phone call. I had a cassette that they had sent me that I hadn’t really had time to listen to. We spent the next day rehearsing the set that we were going to play the following night. It wasn’t quite as bad as it sounds because there was a lot of Irish music we could play together, that Kathryn, Ian and Geoff [Lincoln; bass] knew; but learning the Northumbrian tunes was a bit scary at that short notice. Our first gig was at Tulle, in France."

Within The Kathryn Tickell Band, Tweed and Carr were often looking for opportunities to play duos and to have jams. They were also working in other bands. Carr performed with Simon Thoumire, and Tweed had joined the Poozies (with Patsy Seddon, Mary MacMaster, and Sally Barker) and also did two tours with Sally Barker & The Rhythm. Somewhere in the midst of all this hectic scheduling, Tweed gave up her full-time teaching job.

"Originally, I was only supposed to stay in the band for six months until Kathryn found another accordion player; but we enjoyed working together so much, it seemed to work musically and socially, so I didn’t leave. I carried on juggling the Poozies, the Kathryn Tickell Band, Sally Barker & The Rhythm, which was fairly hectic, but great fun, and very demanding musically. I owe Kathryn a lot, really, for making me push my music so hard. I always tried to achieve higher goals in the music I know best, which really is Irish music; but playing Northumbrian music and playing rhythm accordion was really brought out in me by Roger [Wilson], Kathryn [Tickell], and Sally [Barker]. I’d never thought about the use of the accordion in this way before. Then, meeting Ian Carr was great because he made me play the left hand, my bass, much, much more. In Irish music there used to be a tendency to play very little left hand [bass] with your right hand melody. I think that’s changing a little bit in Irish music now, and certainly for me, the bass has become an incredibly important part of the music I play with Ian."

When Kathryn Tickell decided to take a year off from touring, it was the perfect opportunity for Carr and Tweed to pursue some duo work. After their years of playing as accompanists in bands, it took some adjusting to go out as a twosome. Not only had neither of them led a band before, but they also realized that, with just two musicians, each note counts. Carr described it as "in some ways freeing...but in other ways really scary."

"Suddenly, you have to do so much more," Tweed explained. "You have to play out more, and the audience hears exactly what we’re both doing all the time. So, if either of us makes a mistake, it’s heard immediately, and it’s made huge. Whereas in a band, you can often hide those things quite easily. It’s not only the music, but you have to communicate more. You have to talk to the audience as a front person, and me and Ian had only ever done that a little bit in the Kathryn Tickell Band. We’d relied on Kathryn to be the front person, the person that people had come to see, and therefore, the person who’s making the most on the communication front. It was quite a shock when we went out as the duo to have to suddenly be in those shoes."

From a musical standpoint, "I can do more or less what I like if I’m playing the melody. And Ian can basically do what he likes when he’s accompanying me, but when we start swapping roles — if I become the accompanist and Ian becomes the melody person, it becomes a bit more arranged and we tend to play a bit more in parts like that. But if we’re in what’s considered the normal roles of me in melody and Ian in accompaniment, Ian often plays about with what he does and often trips me up, which is quite exciting. In a band, it’s more structured than that."

The shifting melody and accompaniment lines lend a great diversity and playfulness to Tweed’s and Carr’s performance. Their musical approach has been decribed as "a balancing act between respectful renditions of traditional material and reckless tinkering with rhythm." However it’s described, they give the impression of enjoying themselves immensely and egging each other on to increasing musical heights.

Now, what do two people, who work constantly and keep calendars that would confuse Gregor Mendel, do? They start another band! While performing in Falun, Sweden, they met fiddlers Ola Bäckström and Carina Normansson, their future bandmates in Swåp. "Ian and I were on tour in Sweden with the Kathryn Tickell Band," Tweed elaborated. "We had done about a week, and we hadn’t heard a scrap of Swedish tradtional music. So, we landed in Falun for an early soundcheck, and Ola and Carina had just finished performing a show for children. We persuaded them to play some polskas, and Carina sang in the Kulning tradition. This had the result of scaring Neil, our bass player, to death, and making Kathryn cry. It was beautiful and totally exhilarating."

Carr picked up the thread: "I suggested that I’d come and visit them and learn something about Swedish music, and play with them. So, I wanted to do that, and then Karen said she’d like to do that, as well. ‘Why don’t we form a band?’ So we formed a band because Karen Tweed sent lots of faxes and letters, and made lots of phone calls, and it all happened. And before we’d played a note of music, we’d got a gig!"

Working in Swåp is a learning experience for all the musicians involved. Not only do Carr and Tweed learn about Swedish music, and Bäckström and Normansson learn Irish music, but everyone learns a bit about their own musical background in trying to teach it to others.

Carr explained, "Listening to Carina and Ola play Irish tunes, you learn a lot about the tunes themselves, from hearing them played without the usual Irishy style."

"You also realize," Tweed continued, "how much you don’t know about Irish music. We teach Ola and Carina an Irish reel, for example, and they say to us, ‘Well, how do you bow that?’ And bowing in Irish fiddle playing is so massively important, and neither Ian nor I know how to bow Irish fiddle style really, and that is all important in the phrasing of the tune, and how styles differ from each other, and we can’t tell them that, and that’s really hard."

"It’s good as well," Carr countered, "because it means they have to struggle and find an interesting way to play it."

Much of what Swåp does blends their musical cultures. On the self-named Swåp CD, there’s a set titled "The Red Jacket," which combines two polskas around a slip jig. All four members of the group are active composers, so there’s a lot of original material in their performances. They have even devised a program for playing in the Swedish schools together, called "From Storsjöodjuret to Loch Ness."

Tweed described it: "In our presentation, Ola and Carina want to find the Storsjöodjuret, which is the big lake monster in Sweden. So they go to find another lake monster, which happens to be the Loch Ness Monster in Scotland. We take the children on a geographical tour from Sweden to Great Britain, where they meet me and Ian, and from Newcastle, we go to Wales, and from Wales to Ireland, and from Ireland, we wind up back in Scotland, where we see the Loch Ness Monster. Along the way, we teach them Irish, Welsh, Scottish and Swedish songs, tunes and dances. We end up with a dance on how we met the Loch Ness monster, and we all made friends, and it was all fine, and not very scary at all. The Loch Ness Monster wanted to know if there was another monster, which there was, and we told him about Storsjöodjuret, and he contacted him and lived happily ever after."

The duo feel that the music of Swåp is seen as much more exotic in England and Scotland because the audiences aren’t really familiar with Swedish music. In Sweden, however, much of the audience would be familiar with Irish music. Tweed and Carr worried initially about what the Swedes would think of them playing their tunes. Tweed elaborated: "We thought the Swedes would think it was awful or something and deport us immediately, but they didn’t. They seemed to really like our group. They don’t see it particularly as Swedish music; they see it as our music; they see it as a group, and value it in that context."

Carr was excited that audiences actually danced polskas to their music. "I wasn’t expecting it, I didn’t really know. I was wondering if people would be able to dance to it, and that’s a vote of confidence that they actually can."

All the time that Tweed is balancing the duo and Swåp (and at one point The Kathryn Tickell Band, as well), she was still spending almost half of her performing time with The Poozies. In the beginning, the Poozies consisted of Patsy Seddon and Mary MacMaster of Sìleas on harps, vocals and Seddon on fiddle; Sally Barker on vocals and guitar; Karen Tweed on accordion and backing vocals; and Jenny Gardiner on fiddles and vocals. It was an unusual idea for harps and accordion to play together, but one that worked very well with these particular players. For a short time, when Gardiner left the band, Texas fiddler Neti Vaandrager joined the group. But when she left, the group permanently settled in the four pieces. "We thought it was very scary," Tweed said, "when people had been used to hearing five voices and five instruments, but it actually ended up being a much tighter unit, I think. We were all much happier with having four people, and it was easier in the car."

The harmony vocals have always been a standout element of The Poozies. They sang traditional songs in Scots Gaelic, but also a number of American folk songs and Sally Barker’s original compositions. When Barker left the band in the summer of 1995, they asked Kate Rusby to join the group. Tweed described her addition: "She’s a singer and guitarist, and she also plays the fiddle, so we’re back to having two fiddles in the band, which is wonderful. I think the band has now gone onto a more traditional slant. Kate brings with her a wealth of English traditional music, which is quite nice in that we now have Scottish, Irish and English traditional influences coming into the band. And due to my curent work, we’re also starting to play a bit more Scandinavian music, which is very interesting." The current lineup of the group has just released their first full-length CD, called Infinite Blue. (They previously had a four track EP, titled Come Raise Your Head.)

As if all this weren’t enough, Tweed is also an artist, and she tries to find time to fit drawing, painting and etching into her schedule. She has had art exhibits at The Celtic Connections Festival in Glasgow and has designed album covers for Ceolbeg, Sally Barker, and Chris Wood & Andy Cutting. She also has been heavily involved in the CD layouts for Swåp and Fyace (her second CD with Ian Carr), as well as The Poozies’ poster. When she was asked to put together a tunebook and CD a few years ago, she worked on the design and illustrations. (A new tune book is planned in the upcoming year).

The most recent recording project for Carr and Tweed is a joint album with Chris Wood and Andy Cutting. "Andy Cutting is a really brilliant melodeon/diatonic accordion player who basically plays English, French, and Quebecois music," explained Tweed. "He and Ian have collaborated before doing the odd kind of duo, and also in a band that used to be around called Fishhut. And so they know each others’ music quite well. Andy plays with a fiddle player called Chris Wood, who is also a great singer and guitarist. He basically plays English music and music he’s recorded." The four had a very successful tour last December (1997) as The Two Duos Quartet. They recorded the CD in about two and a half days, and it includes traditional music from England, France, Ireland and Quebec, as well as a few self-penned tunes and songs. They had such a good time recording the album that they’re toying with the title of Halfe as happy as wee (from a John Donne poem).

You’ll have to be mighty fast, or in the right place at the right time, to catch Karen Tweed and Ian Carr. Or you might see one or the other of them off playing Scottish, Swedish, Quebecois, Irish, English or Cajun (Ian’s done it.) music in some far-flung corner of the world. (The Poozies are in Turkey in November.) Whoever, wherever, whenever, there’ll be laughter, imagination, and brilliant playing.